They Blog For You

Arising from the dross and trivia of the national newspapers today are some beacons of truth. Julian Glover in the Guardian says the unsayable. "Afghanistan is already yesterday's war, though it is still to be tomorrow's defeat".  The Independent escapes from the current events of the day, to remind us of a [...]

Greece, Ireland, now Portugal ....  Another bailout of the Euro dressed up as a rescue.  Another high interest loan pressed upon European taxpayers, as if that might solve the problem of excessive debt. Over the past year, we have been struggling to save a total of [...]

If unpaid internships are to be discouraged, I presume that the government will now put unpaid Parliamentary Private Secretaries onto the government payroll? Over the past year, an unprecedentedly number of MPs have been made PPSs under the Coalition.  Even quite junior ministers now make use of these unpaid ministerial aides. A internship, or work experience scheme, MPs [...]

A number of local people have contacted me about Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s ‘Fish Fight Campaign’, and so I thought it would be a good idea to set out my thoughts on the matter here. Throwing dead fish back into the sea is a terrible waste.  It is disruptive to marine ecosystems [...]

                    This week-end has seen numerous briefings against the Health Secretary. I have found him to be one of  the best informed, and  most accessible of Cabinet Ministers. He knows his brief well, is aware of the problems of piloting through change to the NHS, and has already secured the [...]

Delyn MP and former Policing Minister David Hanson has expressed his concern at reports that 2,200...

Delyn MP and former Policing Minister David Hanson has expressed his concern at reports that 2,200 of the most experienced Police officers are to be lost due to the government’s huge frontloaded cuts to the police.   North Wales Police is one of many forces across the country that has been given [...]

To get a sense of quite how flawed international Human Rights law is, reflect on this; For a decade or so, democratically-elected Israeli ministers have been unable to come to the UK for fear that they might be arrested and [...]

"All too often in government the really important decisions slip past you without you realising it, and the true significance of what you have done only dawns on you when it is too late" - Jonathan Powell in The New Machiavelli.Is that what happened with the Euro bailouts? In [...]

                 I was surprised how the government handled media interviews about the TUC protest against the cuts. They could have used them to set out more of the detail of the difficult financial situaiton we find ourselves in. They could have used it to ask how come we are going [...]

The Prime Minister told the Commons today that he and his team had opposed the Euro bail out Mechanism deal negotiated by Alistair Darling, the out going Chancellor, last May. He was repeating what the Chancellor, George Osborne, told me when he said he had opposed it. Yet [...]

The £7 Billion Ireland bailout and (potential) £4.8 Billion bailout of Portugal, easily dwarf the £6.2 Billion of painful, deficit-reducing savings we've managed to make over the past year. Coalition ministers say that they were opposed to the last minute deal outgoing Chancellor, Alistair Darling, did to make Britain liable for the Euro 60 Billion [...]

The British government just agreed to a whole lot more European government at the latest EU summit.  Read the detail on John Redwood's blog.  Very many of these new pan-EU measures apply to Britain in precisely the same way that they do to Eurozone members. Over the [...]

THE BUDGET 2011: An MP today welcomed the announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Norwich Research Park will share in £100 million of investment in science and research facilities. The Park includes the John Innes Centre, one of the world’s leading centres for [...]

Ted Heath came to office with a sense of what he wanted to achieve. But without knowing how to make it happen, he u-turned.   What began as the Selsdon agenda to decentralise economic control ended with a prices and incomes policy.  A generation later, Tony Blair exhausted a mountain of political [...]

Westminster politicians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that they’ve tackled a subject because they’ve talked about it. But clever phrases are not the same thing as a policy. Immigration is a major issue and my constituents raise it with me more than ever. Dealing with immigration requires more [...]

                The Euro crisis has not been resolved. It is a rolling crisis, a series of accidents and market falls, often made worse by rows around the Council of Ministers table or by unfortunate and diverse spin from member states governments.               This week Portugal and the markets have returned to [...]

Public spending is still going up by 6% a year, though there are plenty  of discussions about cuts. One of the reasons is the surge in interest payments we now have to make, as so much has been borrowed in the last couple of years. It makes controlling the deficit all [...]

  Tomorrow will the day from hell for the coalition.There are likely to be statements on Japan and Libya. The indefensible Prince Andrew may again come under critical attack. The world is traumatised by the nightmare images we are witnessing from Japan. I am sure the Government and charities will do all [...]

                     Money has been easy for the UK public sector. The 0.5% interest rate is the one that applies only to government. Government has enjoyed using it to the full, borrowing collosal sums on the back of it.                   Money has been much tighter in the non bank  private sector. Effective [...]

Back in June 2007, I asked the Solicitor General if he'd ask the Serious Fraud Office to reopen the investigation "into the allegations of bribery in relation to the Al Yamamah contract". "No" was the then Labour minister's reply.  Alongside Vince Cable, I then asked for details of payments made under the [...]